Valerie Lawson
As Far Away by Maine poet Valerie Lawson

Valerie Lawson

Valerie Lawson's work has been published in Main Street Rag, BigCityLit, About Place Journal, The Catch, Ibbetson Street, and others with work forthcoming on American Arts Quarterly's website. Lawson's first book, Dog Watch, from Ragged Sky Press, was released in 2007. A chapbook, As Far Away was released in 2015. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times (most recently in 2015), she won awards for Best Narrative Poem and Spoken Word at the Cambridge Poetry Awards and was a finalist for the 2015 Rita Dove Award and the 2013 Outermost Poetry Prize. With her partner, Michael Brown, Lawson co-edits Off the Coast literary journal and teaches poetry at Cobscook Community Learning Center and Senior College at the University of Maine in Machias, where she is currently studying Electronic Publishing and Book Arts. Lawson served on the board of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance from 2013-2015 and is a member of the Maine Adult Education Association.

Valerie has worked as a bookseller, once worked as a security guard at a Rolls Royce show in Newport, coordinated a Reach Out And Read literacy program, organized poetry readings and writing groups in Massachusetts and Maine, was a slammaster, once emceed the National Poetry Slam in Sweden, and participated in cultural exchanges with Ireland.

Valerie lives with her partner and a pair of Siberian Huskies in Robbinston, Maine on fourteen acres of trees with a view across Passamaquoddy Bay to New Brunswick, Canada. Their house is built from old barn beams and woodwork salvaged from a church and a house on the Underground Railroad. The neighbors are mostly four-footed or winged: Osprey, Raven, Bald Eagle, Loon, White-tailed Deer, Red Squirrel, Coyote, Porcupine, Moose, and a Mama Black Bear.